


Toothy Little Things

by melonpen



Category: IT (Movies - Muschietti), IT - Stephen King
Genre: (except Richie and Ben and Mike), Beverly Marsh Kicks Ass, Bittersweet Ending, Eddie is actively trying to not to eat him and I think that’s a beautiful show of love, I don’t think that’s a tag? I’m making it one, Losers Club (IT) Friendship, Multi, Richie Tozier Loves Eddie Kaspbrak, Tags May Change, all the losers are deadlights, but don't worry I'm adding a(n optional) happy ending sequel, characterization? canon? I don't know her, no clue how to tag this either, reverse au, whooo boy this’ll be a bumpy ride, you’re a deadlight and you’re a deadlight
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2019-09-22
Updated: 2020-08-27
Packaged: 2020-10-26 12:22:33
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence
Chapters: 7
Words: 18,704
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/20742137
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/melonpen/pseuds/melonpen
Summary: Once upon a time, in Derry, Maine, a little boy went out to play with his boat and never came back. In another time, in another Derry, he came back, a red balloon in hand. In some times, there wasn’t anything in the sewers at all.In this time, something came out.(Or, in which some of the Losers aren’t quite human, and the rest at least don’t have to deal with Pennywise.)





	1. Floating Dogs

Once upon a time, in Derry, Maine, a little boy went out to play with his boat and never came back. In another time, in another Derry, he came back, a red balloon in hand. In some times, there wasn’t anything in the sewers at all.

In this time, something came out.

While a dog climbing out of the sewers is an odd sight, there was nothing particularly wrong about this dog. It’s short fur was lengthened and darkened by the pouring rain, plastered to its bony, emaciated frame. It bared it’s yellowed teeth as it panted, attempting to pull itself from the slippery concrete shoot. 

It leaped up with a growl, jumping with a splash into the lake of a road before it. The torrent was just lulling, as it had been every few hours for the day. The storm was predicted (though hoped might have been a better choice of a word) to stop tomorrow, and it seemed to take that a personal challenge. It would splutter then choke then vomit a flood down onto the poor, unlucky town of Derry. But as the rain began to slow, and the sun peaked out to taunt the townsfolk, the dog didn’t look for shelter. It hungrily scanned the street, green eyes glinting in the most oddest way, almost yellow, before focusing in on the faintest of sounds.

A black door just a few houses away opened with a soft creak. From the softly lit interior, a face poked out- A man with sharp, defined features and pale skin. His reddish-brown hair was messy, slept-in, at least clued to be the case by his boxers and an oddly antiquated sleep shirt. His grey eyes (ironic, considering his surname) scanned the stormy street. 

He stepped outside, long legs unfolding from behind the door. With an almost cartoonish grace, he sticked his bare leg into the torrent. As cold raindrops began to hit, he retracted it with disgust.

That’s when he felt the wet teeth against his hand.

With a most unmanly shriek, Mr. Robert Gray jumped into the air. The dog was a mangy thing, it’s fur a light brown color, it’s body tight and coiled, all stringy muscles and fragile ribs. _The poor thing looked diseased,_ he thought. Despite its fragility, the dog began to stalk towards him with a growl.

Gray frowned. “Oh- Oh, stop that you,” he singsonged, bopping it on the nose.

The dog, with a look far too expressive for an animal, gazed up in surprise.

“You must be quite hungry,” he murmured to himself, running his hand through the dogs fur. It seemed to drool in affirmation.

It’s fur was far deeper than he would have guessed, rough against his hand like sandpaper. Despite this, it was almost slimey. No matter which way he brushed, it worked against him. _Doesn’t feel like any dog,_ Gray considered, before forgetting it, as most adults did with odd things in Derry.

Absent-mindedly, he deftly kicked the door open behind him. He gave the dog a little grin, buck teeth peeking out from behind his thin lips.

“Come in,” he happily offered the dog, as if it could understand. The not-dog could, but if Grey had known that, this would be a very different story.

And as if that was all it needed, It happily walked inside.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> sorry for the length, the other chapters should be longer!
> 
> my first published fanfic, my first work in It, and and my first multi-chapter fanfic— so if you think that was awful, think that was great, let me know! who do you think the It-dog was? all will be revealed in due time: a week, if I can keep to my schedule.


	2. Shoots and Lads

There was nothing about the sewers a human could find attractive. 

The twisting, turning stone tunnels went on for miles, spanning the entirety of Derry. Slime and grime coated the aged walls. It was cold enough to chill you to the bone, even in the height of summer, and the wetness in the air would cling to your shaking form. The water that covered the floor would come up to the knees of any adult. Sounds from nowhere echoed down the chambers. In most places, the only light came from the drains above, pale rays barely illuminating the passages. Deeper in, there was no light to be found at all.

In one of these places, a boy paced. 

He strode on top of a ledge, and the water was high enough that it gave the illusion of him being in barely an inch of water. Every step sent little ripples across the brown surface. The darkness didn’t seem to even bother him slightly.

Bill reached a wall. He turned on his heel, and continued. As his stalking was met again with another tunnel wall, he paused, before kicking the wall. He shouted, a sound more of anger than pain.

And then, he threw himself into a drain. His body, despite all laws of physics, complied. He ripped and melted into the slots with a horrific ease.

Bill slipped through the pipes like a snake, bones cracking and rebuilding only to break again in a sharp left turn, then ceasing to exist at all. He twisted and pulled and fell. His physical form was more fluid than anything by the time he reached his destination, pulling himself from the cracked ground in stringy pieces, slowly building up into a particularly unhappy looking Bill in a few wet slaps.

The Nest, as it was referred to by its inhabitants, was the true heart of the sewers and modeled all of its disgusting, horrible qualities to the highest degree. It was a living trap of death.

The area itself was a large cavernous space, made of crumbling bricks held together by slime and cobwebs. If one were to get close enough to the walls, they may notice the wide range of drawing scratched and painted with upon them, ranging from stick figures and white circles in worrying positions to detailed, angelic drawings of girls with fire upon their heads and curly haired boys. Of course, if one managed to get that close, their death was a confirmed outcome.

What most noticed (the rest having been dead already) were the objects quite literally floating in the air. There weren’t many, only a few precious things, like the stars blinding enough to be seen blinking through an autumn fog. A hospital gown, a bottle of Jack Daniels, a croquet mallet, an unfinished manuscript. 

(They didn’t like to take trophies, but sometimes, they just couldn’t help themselves.)

And, like the most disappointing of crown jewels, a large outcropping of limestone sat in the center of it all, where Bill stood, steaming.

Seemingly to no one, he growled, “Guh- Georgie’s not back.” 

Like an animatronic on a timed queue, Stan emerged from the dark water, sitting up as if he had been awoken in his bed by a particularly piercing alarm. He ran a hand though where his “hair” had been plastered to his “face”, pulling it back to reveal a set of confused, blurry brown eyes. Four, actually.

“What?” He groaned.

“_He’s not back!_” Bill all-but shrieked. He cringed, clutching his head with both hands. He dropped them to only run over to the edge of the island, peering sightlessly into the blackwater.

“Wrong direction, try up,” Stan supplied with a mumble as he began to climb clumsily out of the water, onto the ledge.

Bill quickly turned from the sight of Stan failing to decide if he should climb onto the ledge arms or legs first to far above him. The expansive ceiling seemed to forever continue on, inwardly arching stone that steadily decayed, letting in slivers of dusty light, and even it seemed to get trapped in the webs. The breaks in the manhole cover-esce opening was blinding white next to the room’s darkness.

Where the ceiling began to turn in, her back pushing against a caved section of the wall, her other half tangled in webs, Beverly watched with a grin that was already half fallen. Bracing her hands against the wall, fingertips and wrists holding her to safety, she leaned forward, staring down at Bill’s shaking form. Even higher, a perfect mirror on the other side of the rise, Eddie did the same.

“He probably got distracted,” Beverly shouted down in an attempted consolatory manner as she began to untangle herself. She retracted a leg from the webbing, then the other, and reached out an arm at the gossamer strings. She twisted her hand within it, then leaped from her perch like a falcon in a dive. She never seemed to slow, landing roughly next to Bill, putting a soft hand on his plaid shoulder. “You shouldn’t worry yet. It’s only been three days.”

“Thuh- Three days is pl-enty reason to worry,” he said with a sulking glare.

Beverly thought about mentioning they had just slept for multiple decades, but decided against it.

“Bill has a point,” Eddie shouted down, giving his two cents. “I, I mean, Georgie may be kinda absent-minded because he’s younger, but, like, he’s not that bad?” Halfway down the wall, Eddie was climbing slowly as ever- He always made sure to have three points of contact with the wall, a fact the others had no qualms with teasing him over. “Maybe something got him. We don’t know what humans are like now. What if, oh fuck, what if it’s not a human but like-“

“Okay!” Beverly quickly cut him off. “But like Eddie said, he probably- Got distracted by a bright red fire truck and decided to follow it around town.”

Bill looked at her, at least for his typical attempts at a constant straight face, with abject horror. “What if he- _he- he left Derry?_”

Out of sight, a now far more human-looking Stan raised a hand to his face, rubbing his temples with barely repressed exasperation. 

“No, no, no, we are not going down this road,” he groaned. 

“I sh- shouldn’t have let him go hunting on his own. I knew we should have wah- waited at least another cycle. He’s so young, he doesn’t like hunting,” Bill moaned, gesturing aggressively with his hands. His overarching, ever-present worry about the safety of his brother (and odd family as a whole) was the closest thing to fear he had yet to experience. Though on many occasions such as this one, the line between them blurred. 

“Listen, Bill,” Stan said evenly. He set his hand on Bill’s free shoulder, and leaned in close enough to nearly knock foreheads. Reddish brown eyes met yellow-streaked blue. “We know he couldn’t have left Derry, we would have felt it, right? Why don’t-” he looked down for a moment, biting his lip in concentration. He leaned back, and looked up again, a spark in his eyes. “Why doesn’t Beverly look for Georgie?” 

There was a moment of silence, save the dripping of water.

“Shouldn’t I go?” Bill choked out.

He removed his arms, crossing them, giving Bill a look. “You said that we should keep a low profile since that factory meal. You aren’t exactly… great, at that.”

Bill knew he couldn’t argue with, but that didn’t mean he wasn’t going to try. “We practically ki- killed that generation! None of ‘em will remember that. E- Even without the- the thing.” 

The “thing” was referring to the general misma over the town of Derry, the apathy that kept the majority of its adults blind as bats to the true horror living in the town. None of them bothered to give it a proper name. It just was: In the same way as Georgie was Bill’s brother, and Beverly was the only girl in their group, and they had human names that could be spelled in 27 letters or less. 

“Maybe so. But,” Stan continued, releasing his vice-like grip on Bill’s shoulder to throw his hands into the air, “What if Georgie comes back here? Which is the most likely scenario. He’s gonna freak out if you’re not here.” 

This was an exaggeration, of course, and Stan knew it. Georgie probably would worry after his brother, but a conjured toy or ridiculous impression would easily be enough to distract him until Bill returned. But Stan didn’t want Bill to go. Bill would probably leave a frankly wasteful amount of human meat in his path to find Georgie, something he didn’t support on both moral and logical grounds.

And also, Stan though, he didn’t want to leave the sewers. They were wet and damp like a thick blanket that constantly laid over you, and the cold was soothing to his hot blood. He didn’t have to strain his eyes against the burning sun, and constantly count the shadows to make sure nothing hid in them. 

And maybe a selfish little part of him wanted Bill with him. But that part didn’t exist, and if it did, Stan was going to starve it in the glow of his deadlight.

Bill finally separated their locked eyes, glaring at the floor, a frown marring his features. He looked at Beverly, who simply looked back, back straight and head high, stalwart as ever, and then glanced to where Eddie was half stuck to the wall, half flailing to the ground.

“Fine,” he stuttered, giving nod as a bit of a blush raised in his grey cheeks. Beverly rocked on her heels, giving him half of a toothy grin.

“We’ll be quick, don’t worry. And we’ll make sure to grab a decent meal while we’re there.” Suddenly, in a red blur, Beverly was halfway across the room, leaning down to squeeze Eddie’s shoulders. “Right, Eddie?”

“What?” The smaller boy squeaked out, and Bill and Stan’s minds echoed a similar sentiment.

However, the obvious facts (if only to Beverly) were that Eddie hated the sewers. He hated the dark, and at least in the deepest parts of the woods that they called home long before humans even measured time, soft light always filtered through the tight knit trees. Even when the sun was hidden away on the underside of the sky. The ground there was soft and warm, he fucking missed that warmth, and he had thought he didn’t like the dirt but in hindsight, it was certainly better than greywater. 

“I mean, yeah, yeah, sure, I’ll go,” Eddie added, trying and failing miserably to be suave.

“Cool,” Beverly said with a grin. She was already walking away from him, slowly stepping backwards. “I’ll go out the forest pipe, if you take the town?”

She was gone before Eddie could even agree.

Eddie turned back towards Bill, who was currently engaged in a fervent whisper conversation with Stan. The mostly blue-eyed boy paused, glancing up at him with a grimace.

“Keep your ah- Eyes peeled, right, Eddie? And s- Stay away from any turtles,” Bill called out.

“Right,” he replied. 

Eddie stared at the smooth surface of the water. He hesitated, then considered, then finally let out a sigh, shaking out his thin limbs. He took a deep breath, and dived.

~~~

Eddie’s skull crashed into the metal with a crack. He shrieked, and swore. Then, he cursed. He cursed again. He decided to end the whole matter with a satisfactory ‘fuck’. 

The pain was entirely superficial, and there was no actual damage to be found, but that didn’t mean he had to enjoy the experience.

He felt out his surroundings with his hands, until his knuckles met the hollow, bendy feeling of thinner metal.

He shoved open the washing machine door with practiced ease, blinking through the sudden, dusty sunlight. The door gently flaked rust from where it swayed on its hinges.

Eddie carefully crawled out into the remains of Kaspbrak home’s basement. The sight was familiar, even if changed by time. The boxes may have all-but rotted away and mold grown on every conceivable surface, but the layout was still the same, the contents still untouched by humans.

He stood up, ignoring the feeling of crawling on him (it was probably spiders, which was just disgusting) to consider his plan. _Where would Georgie go?_ He thought to himself. _The school’s pretty good hunting grounds but he won’t go there because he doesn’t like large groups of humans. He obviously didn’t stick to the sewer drains. Where else is there that’s worthwhile if you don’t have someone in mind? I mean, there’s the store but-_

The crawling feeling persisted, but something wasn’t entirely right. It wasn’t so much crawling on his hair, or his back, as much as finger light touches on the edge of his mind. It was unique, indescribable feeling.

One he knew well enough.

Was someone in the house?

There was a sudden jittering, high, rattling sound. The doorknob of basement door, pathetically shaking with the outside attempts to turn it.

Better, new question: _Who_ was in _his_ house?

The wooden door fell forward. Bang! It slid down the stairs with a crash, accompanied by some indeterminate figures. A litany of curses followed after it.

Eddie blinked at the offending humans on the floor. Two adolescent boys, much like himself at the moment. One had dark skin and hair, and was laying face down, mostly covered by the other’s lanky body. The other was stuck on top of his companion like a flipped beetle, trapped with his soft, Hawaiian-shirt-covered belly showing. He wore thick black spectacles that contrasted heavily with his pale skin.

He blinked at him, his surprise as evident on his face as it was in the air. The smell was irony, if not as sharp as blood, nor as sweet as fear. The scent faded surprisingly fast, replaced with an unfamiliar odor, a rare occasion for Eddie. It was somewhere between wood smoke and the atmosphere before rain with a heavy dash of stardust. A bit like the happiness he smelt off his friends, though joy never burnt in the back of his throat like this.

He was brought back to the moment by a bark of a sound. The pale boy was… laughing? But the sound was far too stilted to be real. Eddie squinted at him, as if by looking closer he could discern his motives. 

The boy's cackling ended. Eddie stared.

“Who the fuck are you?” Richie Tozier asked, without an ounce of hesitation or fear in his voice.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> me, remembering this fic at 11:58 last night: I ABANDONED MY BOY


	3. Hiding (in Plain Sight)

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Wow, this chapter took a lot longer than intended to write, sorry! I really struggled with it and I can't quite say I'm happy with it, but hey, that's life. Enjoy some awkward social interaction!

The light at the end of the tunnel didn’t create a feeling of relief within Beverly as much as one of satisfaction. Trudging through the water and muck wasn’t necessary for her, but she had come to look forward to that angry-gritty-smirking feeling. 

She lumbered over to the wall of the tunnel, leaning against its slimy surface. The woods outside were clear of more intelligent life, but brimming with little minds and souls all clamoring to kill or to survive. In the powerful sunlight, the green leaves, brimming with chlorophyll, dripping with dew, shook and swayed in the wind. They seemed to beckon her back into the land of the living.

One step, then two, and then her bare feet sunk into the bitter cold water. She curled her toes, grinning at the rough feeling of rocks. It hadn’t changed in the last few decades, that was for sure.

Padding out into the tree-filled area, she considered her options. A quick sniff of the air gave no trace of Georgie, but that wasn’t a surprise- Bill was a good tracker, he wouldn’t, no, couldn’t have missed his brothers scent that close to home. Though the fact he’d left the woods was strange; Georgie might complain till the end of it, but he always listened to his brother. Well, mostly. Him getting distracted by the bustling town was a very likely option, she hadn’t been only trying to calm Bill with the fire truck option.

_Damn, Eddie’s gonna find him first,_ Beverly thought with a hint of disappointment. _I should have taken in-town._

_Now, what would be fastest to find the kid? A dragon’s fun, but not exactly subtle… Snakes are fast, right?_

She was pulled from her thoughts by a distant crunching of sticks, distressed breathing, and an undeniable brush of a consciousness against her own. 

She noticed a fluttering of motion fairly far away, something quickly making its way down a hill. From the scattered trees, a blurry figure became clear as day as her bright eyes focused to slits on them. It was a boy, with straight, blond-brown hair that fell over his forehead and the tips of his eyes like a curtain. He was overweight, though his stout height didn’t help the matter. 

As he stumbled forward, Beverly realized he’d probably notice her if he got any closer. She backpedaled quickly, to the sewer pipe, leaning back against its rough, thin surface, gripping it till it bit back against her fleshy palms. She could blend into the background of the forest easily, or transform into something innocuous, like a bird. _Or,_ her stomach lurched, _well._

What’s the point in meat, if it’s not well seasoned? Children feared simply things, and forests never held safety.

No, no, now wasn’t the time to make a rushed decision. The thought came to her in a flash: _Don’t trust your gut._ The thought almost made her break into a giggle. Almost.

He was drawing closer now, she could make out the perspiration beading on his face, the light tan on the bridge of his nose and cheeks, brown scuffs of dirt on his grey shirt. He began to squint, he could now see her, but he certainly couldn’t make out anything certain between the trees. It wasn’t too late to back out.

Beverly quickly checked her form. Four limbs, five digits each, hair in the right places and fragile, dull nails- She seemed fine. Taking an unnecessary deep breath, she looked down at the clumps of grass trying valiantly to burst out through the leaves and mud, the ever-so-boring ground. But instead, through the short waves of her hair, she watched him.

As he walked closer, his narrowed eyes relaxed into a nearly blank look, somewhere between calculation and an acknowledgement. Beverly wondered if he perhaps he would walk by without talking to her. She hoped so.

Instead, he stopped in front of her, only a foot or so away. 

“Hello!” he enthused, his voice fairly low, tone pleasant if strained.

She looked up at him, and his emotions surged to the point of being difficult to ignore. She hated the whole empath thing that she and the others shared, especially in moments like this. The front of her mind was crowded with a (_girl-girl-hormones-fear/worry/shy-girl-hope?-worry_) feeling that made her want to crawl into a pit. However, she was pleasantly surprised when his thoughts didn’t turn darker, the way most of the males of Derry did before she even spoke.

This town really was the dredges of humanity. It made hunting a hell of a lot easier though, when the house cat thinks it can take a bite out of the wolf in sheep’s clothing.

And the occasional spot of guilt. That certainly made it dissipate.

“Hey,” Beverly responded coolly. “You’re the new kid, right?”

(_I’m Ben, Ben’s my name,_ his mind began to ring with, out of simple mindless script following, along with _Hanscom_ and other, less pleasant denomers like _Fatty_ and _Tits_ being shouted out from dark little cracks.)

The words came out more as a statement than a question. Beverly didn’t intend it, but she was aware that there had been no Hanscoms in Derry the last time she checked. She might not keep as close tabs on the town as Bill, but Derry wasn’t exactly renowned for changing faces.

The boy frowned almost imperceptibly at this, but nodded immediately after. “Yeah, yeah, that’s me. I, uh, haven’t seen you before? Are you new here? I’m Ben, by the way”

She looked up, finally getting a proper close look at the boy. He wasn’t actually half-bad looking by human standards. Sure, he was overweight, and that was evidently enough to bring out the hatred in his peer's little hearts, but he looked… soft wasn’t the right word, even if it was fitting. _Approachable, maybe? No, no._

His mouth parted into a slight ‘o’ when she looked up, and a few little spikes of surprise from him tentatively nudged her mind. Nervously, she tried to look down at her body at subtlety as possible- Definitely nothing abnormal that she could see.

“I’m Beverly,” she offered, half her mouth lifting into a smirk.

“That’s a pretty name. It’s fitting, ‘cause you’re pretty- I mean, no, your not-” Words that had left him in only seconds now abandoned him, with blood rushing violently to his cheeks. Beverly couldn’t figure out if she was feeling amusement or secondhand mortification more, regardless of how it violently pulsed off him. “I mean you are! I mean- Great, great, good name. I’m Ben.”

This time, a light giggle did slip past her lips. “You did mention that before, Ben.” The word felt differently coming out of her mouth than she expected, far too short and smooth of a sound.

“Oh, um, it was just in case you missed it the first time,” he said, trying to recover. He ran a hand through his damp, sweaty hair, removing it from its sticking place on his forehead to being slicked back on his scalp. A few stray pieces flopped right back. He looked back up at her from where his gaze had drifted to his feet.

“So, do you go to Derry High, or…?” He trailed off his continuation. In her mind, Beverly quickly scrambled for a reasonable lie.

“I’m schooled by my father,” she said, the words unnaturally stilted even to her own ears.

Ben paused. “Oh, that’s- Cool, like-” Ben’s head whipped around at a distant cracking sound. Probably a deer, Beverly guessed, the thoughts weren’t too fleeting but they certainly weren’t complex. 

She squinted at him, cocking her head slightly to the side. “Something on your mind?” 

“No, no,” he began, but with a searching look from Beverly, concluded, “yeah. Just trying to watch out for some kids. Uh, do you know the Bowers Gang- Of course you do, I mean, how could you not-“

“Don’t worry, they aren’t in the woods,” she cut him off. ‘They’ she still wasn’t particularly sure of, not that it really mattered. There was always some groups of youth committing violence in town when the adults were to busy with normalcy to do it themselves. She’d have to remember the name Bowers though, might be wise to check them out. 

Wouldn’t be wise to pass up a name practically scrawled on a meal ticket.

“Oh, okay.” Ben gave her a slightly doubtful look. 

“So, uh, are you gonna be around this summer?” He asked, a trace of hope leaking into his voice.

Beverly couldn’t help the grin that split across her face at the innocent question. It wasn’t one fit for the situation: Wide and sharp and with a bit of glee within it that wasn’t quite right.

Her voice almost silky, she said, “I think I will be, Ben, I think I will be.” 

Before he could speak, once more he looked around at, frankly, sounds that should be barely audible to human ears. Literal empathy aside, she could feel the stress radiating off the boy. She couldn’t tell if it left her irritated or bored.

Realizing it was a good time to take her leave, Beverly stepped back carefully from the boy, letting her body melt into the forest behind her. The familiar pulling-tickling she’d come to associate with changing forms washed her over her.

When Ben turned around, there was no red-haired girl to be seen. A little gasp of surprise to slipped from his lips, and Beverly felt a little spark of amusement to light up in her chest.

She stood there, watching him in silence for a few minutes until he walked off, an air of confusion around him. Then, attempting to pretend the meeting never occurred, she continued to sweep the woods.

In the center of town, Mike really, really was regretting going in the Kaspbrak home.

Avoiding Henry Bowers had been the long and short of it. He’d had to pull Richie in by the collar of his shirt, but it was a better alternative than- _Yeah, we can take our chances,_ he had thought.

The inside of the Kaspbrak house was a nightmare in rotting beige, not that it was a surprise. The rumor was they wanted to tear it down after the lady who owned it croaked, but the ghost haunted it kept killing who ever went inside. If that was true, the house’s boarded windows and broken shingles seemed to embody its undead owners hate.

When Mike had first heaved Richie and himself past the frame and thrown the worn, old door behind them, it seemed that he had thrown them both into a pit of blackness. But as his eyes slowly adjusted, he found himself still right.

Water which seemed to drip from the oddest of places left the walls and floor coated with all varieties of mold. As Mike had shifted his feet to stand, he felt the floor squish under his cheap sneakers.

Richie cursed softly behind him. “What the fuck, Mike?” 

“Would you rather be out there with Bowers?” Mike frowned, while he tried to stand on his feet without touching anything. He raised his hands in an awkward, classic balancing position.

“Well, no,” he stage whispered, “but come on! Couldn’t we have dived into the cellar across the street or something? I don’t want to get murdered by fuckin’ Sally.”

“I don’t think you have to whisper. The door’s pretty thick. And it’s Sonia, I think.”

“But whispering is fun! But you want to know what isn’t fun? Getting murdered by some lady! Unless we’re talking the little death here…” Richie’s voice jumped to his typical loudness on the last sentence. As he went to join Mike in standing, his hand rested on a coffee table behind him. He pulled it back, face twisted in disgust, and Mike had to cough away his laughter when Richie squinted his magnified eyes at him in betrayal.

“Is this funny to you, Mike? Look at this shit!” Mike stepped back from Richie’s violent gesturing of his blackened palm.

“Yeah, whatever,” he said with a snort. 

Mike gazed into the darkness, trying to make out more of the area. The only light was from a side room, faint as could be, but still it glinted off what appeared to be old plastic pill bottles and the occasional piece of glass. 

“What do you think we should do?” Richie asked, somehow managing to sound rhetorical, sarcastic, and sincere.

“Why would I know?” 

“I don’t know, you usually know something. I’m not the guy with the plan. You’re like, the Michael with the plan-ichael!” He paused for a moment with a look of comical disappointment. “That nickname was _shit_. I really need to work on that.” 

Mike and Richie’s friendship was… odd, to say the least. It was planted in necessity and blossomed like wild carrot- That is to say, having a lot more growth below ground rather than above.

Mike didn’t know much about Derry High, considering he didn’t go there, but it seemed that if you scraped the pummeled bottom of the barrel that was the school’s body, you’d find a grinning Richie Tozier.

In another world, Richie might have been pretty popular. He was quick thinking and smart when he applied himself (not that intelligence would ever get you in with the popular crowd), witty and an odd sort of charming that peaked out through the dirt that crusted his words.

But that was the matter. His words were vulgar, and loud, and they never stopped, and he wore glasses thicker than Patrick Hocksetter’s skull, so he was a loser.

On the other hand, Mike was black. His fate in Derry seemed to have been picked out before he was born.

Mike shook his head as if to clear those thoughts, and he considered where their friendship (?) was now. Two summers ago they had started their odd interactions on the simple foundation of mentioning where they saw Bowers and his gang last when they passed. 

Eventually, Richie had started to stop where Mike wait outside the butchers and talk his ear off, regardless of any polite attempts to dissuade him.

He seemed pretty lonely.

(And Mike couldn’t say he wasn’t, either.)

Eventually, between sneaking out of his house to mess around in the quarry and dodging Bowers and helping each other with bandaids when they didn’t, Mike found he couldn’t consider Richie an annoying acquaintance. He hadn’t for a quite a while, actually. 

Rather than say any of this, Mike focused on instilling confidence into his voice before speaking. “Let’s explore it.”

Richie made a sound that was somewhat in between choking and a laugh. “Did you miss the part where I said I didn’t want to get murdered?”

“Come on, there might be something crazy in here!”

“Yeah!” Richie exclaimed. “Like a fucking murder ghost! Or a hobo!”

“Well, I’m gonna go in there,” Mike said, already walking into the room to the left of the hallway. Richie was practically glued to his side in seconds.

“Not without me, asshole!”

The room appeared to be living room, or at least the remnants of one. The room was better lit than the hallway, thin arrows of light piercing the room from the cracks in the boarded up windows (nailed on the inside as well, he noted). Some square pieces of wood, maybe picture frames, layed on the ground next to a tipped over coffee table.

Despite the wreckage and rot, the place seemed to have an almost undisturbed feeling. Mike moved further into the room, and he felt the warmth of Richie inch behind him.

In the center of the room, like a shrine, sat an out-of-style recliner. The knitted blanket on it might have been pretty, once, but time had done its damage to it as much as the rest of the house. It was faded green and white, or maybe that was mold too, but the black creeping at the corners seemed far more likely. Holes seemed to stretch down the inclined back. The occasional bit of brown was woven into it, increasing into an overwhelming expanse in the middle.

_It’s ugly as sin,_ Mike thought. But more importantly to him, there was something… _off_ about it.

He looked closer. The brown was an awful color, almost yellow in the farthest spots, then a sort of rust in others, nearly red in the center of the blob. Whatever thread used was weirdly textured- He almost thought to touch it, reaching his hand out, but then something clicked in his mind. What clicked? The shape of it almost made him think of-

Oh. It- _Oh._

“Richie?” Mike called out, his voice wavering around the name.

“What?” the boy replied, fear seemingly replaced by curiosity. He had already wandered a bit away, nudging a pile of wood with his foot. 

Mike simply pointed at the bloodied recliner. Richie squinted at it for a moment, before his eyes widened in realization, skin even paler than normal, buck teeth peeking out from where his mouth had begun to gape.

“You don’t think- Fuck, Mike, they’d had to take that shit away, there’s no way.”

“Apparently not,” he croaked out. “I mean look at the rest of this place: They didn’t clean the rest of the house.” Mike regarded the rubble at their feet, a bit more fervently than just moments before. “I wonder if this was all from her struggling,” he continued.

“Jesus Christ,” Richie swore softly to himself. “Let’s fucking get out of here!”

“We’re still hiding, Richie, did you forget that?” Mike exclaimed. “Anything in here is long dead. Henry Bowers is far from it. Let’s just… Move on from here, okay?”

Richie huffed, but it seemed more like a show of how entirely-fine-and-calm-he-was than anything. Even in the weak light of the room, Mike could see the sweat beading at his temple. “Fine,” he shook his head. “Fine! Let’s go deeper into the spooky dark murder house!”

Mike stopped for a moment. Then, with an air of casualty, he clapped Richie on the back. He stiffened under his touch, and for a moment, he was worried he’d misread everything terribly- But then Richie shrugged off the touch, giving him a toothy, fake, but at least not deeply worried grin.

“Hey, only ladies get to touch,” he joked.

At the living room stretched on a little more, before splitting off into what appeared to be a kitchen. He recalled seeing something at the end of the entrance hallway, it probably looped back around. The more interesting options to Mike, however, were the two shut doors, one to the right of the wall, the other placed awkwardly in the space between the corner of the room and the opening to the kitchen.

He moved over to the right door, flicking the deadbolt, which was on the outside, to unlock it. It opened with a creak out of a B-rated horror movie. Mike peered inside. 

It was a bedroom, and the paint of the pale blue walls may have been peeling back, but it seemed to have escaped the pervasive mold in the rest of the house. It was definitely a kid’s room, probably a boy’s, containing a small, well made bed, and a wooden desk coated in dust. A few pieces of paper rested on it, the corners nibbled and torn, as well as a hunk of plastic that resembled an inhaler. He fully entered the room, and examined the papers, his fingers gently brushing the edges of the pages. The bright colors of it were all-but gone, but the darkness of the black ink was still visible in faded grey. 

SUPERMAN, patchy, thin lines proclaimed in bubble letters on the top half of the page. Little bits of black ink scattered the page in what once might have been words or other drawings. 10¢, the left hand corner advertised. _That’s a sixth of what comics cost now,_ Mike thought. _Must be from at least a decade ago._

The stories that were whispered were always about Sonia’s crazy, bloody demise, whether that be by a satanic cult in the woods or a psychopath in the shower. Mike had thought they were total bunk, but the blood stains on the recliner claimed otherwise. Regardless, they’d certainly never mentioned a kid.

Mike wondered if he had been their age, back then, and what became of him.

Feeling sick to his stomach, Mike left the room, and shut the door behind him. Suddenly, he bumped into something tall and warm. 

A strangled yell broke from his throat, and he went to raise his arm in defense- And was greeted with a confused Richie with halfway raised fists. Mike dropped his arms, and Richie did as well, backing up and pushing his glasses back up to the bridge of his nose.

“Wow, Mike, and I thought I was on edge,” he snarked. Mike smiled grimly, and shook his head.

He moved past Richie, to the last door of the room. Its worn wood seemed to beckon him to investigate. He grabbed the cold, once bronze handle, which garnish had now chipped off to reveal it’s grey metal, and twisted it. It didn’t turn, letting out a metal click.

“It’s locked,” Mike frowned.

“Whelp, I think that’s our cue to head on out, buckaroo.”

Rather than acknowledge this, Mike leaned his shoulder against the door. He backed up, then slowly mimicked his plan of action.

“Will you help me break this door down?” he asked.

“Are you fucking crazy?”

Mike shrugged.

“Yeah,” Richie said with an exaggerated sigh. “‘course I will. I’m not dragging your corpse out of here after we piss off the resident whackjob.” Richie mirrored his stance. “Your mother would never forgive me, even after all the nights we’ve spent together…”

“Let’s do it on three,” Mike offered, ignoring him once more. Richie continued to prattle on, currently something related to something involving his mother’s libido and sheep. Louder than necessary, he began, “Three.” He took a deep breath. “Two.” He steadied his stance, flexing the muscles of his legs, rocking slightly back and forth on them. _“One.”_

He slammed into the door, and the weak hinges surrendered as if they had never had any fight in them at all. 

There was an odd, terrifying feeling that captured Mike in it’s grasp, and it took him a few milliseconds to finally register the sensation as weightlessness. Richie was behind him, body plummeting against him, apparently a few seconds late. His hands scrabbled helplessly at the grit covered door beneath him.

The last thought to register to him before the ground swelled in front of his eyes was, _oh, that was the door to the basement stairs._

The crash was cacophonic, wood splintering into pieces on concrete and yelps from him and Richie alike, and every muscle in him clenched on impact, but it didn’t minimize the pain when his chest and cheek collided with the ground, knocking the breath out of him.

And then Richie, landing square on his back, bony head knocking straight on the space between his shoulder blades.

Mike laid there for a moment, wheezing. Than another. His brain, panicking, seemed to be high in the clouds and unable to take note of anything, but slowly he drifted down. He seemed, much to his own surprise, to not be dead of a broken neck. He shifted his shoulder blade (_ow ow ow, avoid doing that_), and twitched his fingers, flexed his toes a bit. His chest and shoulder and the inside of his forearms where he’d instinctively tried to break his fall, and the left cheek he’d landed on- Okay, everything in his upper body was aching with a violent passion, but he seemed to have gotten out unscathed.

He became aware that Richie was talking, which wasn’t a surprise. He caught the end of the sentence, ‘Fuck are you?’ 

He groaned, and the pressure that was Richie suddenly released. His face popped down into Mike’s vision, huge eyes looking worried.

“Shit, shit! You alright?” Richie yelped. He grabbed his forearm, pulling him up. Richie didn’t look hurt, either; The only indication of their little ride was the dust that was speckling his messy hair and coating all but where his glasses had protected him. Mike doubted he looked much better.

He nodded, absencently, as he found himself focusing far more on the other boy behind him. He had pale skin, almost unhealthily so, with an odd blush to his cheeks and forehead, and deep, dark bags under his eyes. His hair was dark brown and seemed as if it had been once well coiffed, but now fell onto his face in greasy strands.

He was currently looking at them with a sort of bewildered disgust, as one might at some newly discovered mold in the bottom of a forgotten glass of soda.

“What,” the boy enunciated, raising his hands, which Mike noticed seemed to shake with tension, “are you doing here?” 

Richie’s head whipped around towards him. “Fucking ditto! We came into this hell house to get away from Bowers, yeah, but what are you doing chilling in the fucking basement? We had to _break in here!_ And, again, who the fuck are you?!” he finished, his voice a high shriek.

The boy just stared, blinking in shock. Richie, to Mike’s surprise, looked almost chastised. Considering he doubted that expression had ever crossed Richie’s face before, he couldn’t be sure. Richie tipped his face down, pushing his thick glasses up to the bridge of his nose.

“Uh, sorry. This house gives me the creeps.”

The boy finally, quietly, indignantly, spoke. “I think it’s a nice house.”

Richie snorted. “What? This is a fucking crack den, best case scenario. Is that why you’re here? To fuel your secret drug binges away from pleasant society?” The boy opened his mouth, looking somehow managing to look more offended than at the start of what now could be considered a conversation, but Richie cut him off with a gleeful clap. “I know who you are! You’re that, uh, new kid. What’s the name? Hascom? Hanscon? Bob Hanscom? Thought you were bigger.”

The boy seemed to, with a wheezy breath in and out, gain some semblance of calm expression. Then, his face almost seemed to light up at Richie’s words. “Yeah, yeah, that’s me. It’s Eddie, actually.”

Mike didn’t go to school with Richie, but as the boy- No, Eddie, said the words, it seemed entirely true. He was pretty sure he'd seen the kid around actually, right? His eyes had always been that dark shade of brown, right? Right?

He felt the hair raise on his arms and shoulders, gooseflesh tickling him, but he couldn’t put a finger on why.

Richie, on the other hand, seemed to have no qualms. He poked the smaller boy in the chest, who looked down with big eyes to watch the path of his finger. 

“I knew it!” he cried. “Well, Mike, I don’t know about you, but I’ve had enough adventuring for one day. Let’s blow this fucking pop stand!” 

Mike couldn’t help but agree. He tried to not watch to obviously as Eddie’s eyes bobbed from Richie to Mike, never seeming to stop. A bit of pink tongue peeked out from his lips to lizard-lick at them. From that focus point, Mike noticed the thin, pale, nearly invisible scars trailing down from the corners of his mouth to the bottom of the jaw. Mike couldn’t help but wince in sympathy- The thick scarring accumulated on his knees from both work and play (admittedly, more of the latter) could verify his ability to feel the other boy’s pain. _How do you even get a scar like that,_ he found himself wondering.

“I’m Richie, by the way. Comedian extraordinaire, local ladies man, general icon. Ask your mom about me, I’m sure she can fill you in on all my endowments,” he continued, waggling his eyebrows. He walked a few steps back towards the stairs, and Mike took the first step up them, but Eddie only moved closer, hesitant.

“See anything odd here?” he asked.

“Oh, if you’re refering to the murder chair upstairs, hell yeah! The fuck’s up with that? I mean, looks like my sister’s bed after she forgets her period’s coming,” Richie replied instantly. 

Eddie squinted at him in disgust. “No-” He cut himself off with a sigh. 

Then, Richie turned to sidestep the remains of the door and Mike had the perfect view of something that was entirely unfathomable.

With an air of determination, Eddie shoved a pile of boxes to his left. This, in and of itself, was a decision that to Mike was completely devoid of any logic or purpose. But then, like an impossible domino effect, another pile of boxes began to wobble. And another. And Eddie stood there, watching it all with a vaguely displeased expression like Mike’s own father when he read the morning newspaper.

Mike felt rooted to the spot, like he couldn't move a single muscle. Richie obviously turned back to the sight of a towering pile of half rotted cardboard beginning to descend on their odd acquaintance. Mike managed to get out a warning yell from his locked jaw as it fell. The boy made no move to escape the crumbling, collapsing, muffled-shattering mass.

And then, as Mike watched in silent horror, Richie dived, his body meeting Eddie’s, shoving him out of the path just as the rubble hit the floor.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> The power of gay panic: Dangerous adrenaline fueled bravery. Feel free to let me know what you think, criticism is greatly appreciated!


	4. Choices, Choices, and Utter Obliviousness

For an afternoon in Maine, it was pleasantly warm. Of course, Ben supposed, it was June, but after the worst winter he had ever experienced and a disgusting, wet spring, and the last week having exemplified that fact in the fullest way possible, every true summer day was to be appreciated.

But, the warmth in his cheeks and chest were not to be attributed to the hazy sun, not at all.

In Ben’s opinion, Beverly was the prettiest girl he had ever seen. He’d never seen a girl with hair that short, but it framed her face like a halo. Her eyes, too, had shocked him at first: They were nearly the same color as her hair, a bright orange-yellow that glimmered in the sun, almost glowing. Thin pupils, more oval-like opposed to circles.

Maybe, just maybe he would see her again that summer. That would be something to look forward to beyond books and TV shows.

Though, something still clouded pervasively over what should be a nice summer. That distracted from these pleasant thoughts he wanted to sink into like a warm bath. There was still the problem of Bowers. Rather, he was a problem to Bowers. Which was not a place one wanted to be in.

Right in the beginning of summer, he had got Ben good, really good, the “H” carved in pink lines on the flesh of his belly speaking for itself. Ben was sure Bowers still planned to finish the job. To finish him.

He still remembered that day all too well. The pain and the running and the hiding. His white shirt stained with blood and mud and other substances he didn’t want to think too hard on. Stumbling home on a twisted ankle. Ben was pretty sure he’d come out on the next turn of streets, pushing through the twisted underbrush, oblivious to the scratches they left as their thin, wooden twigs reached out to claw him back into the barrens. He spent his half-shoeless walk home going between thinking about how much his feet hurt and worrying about how he would explain it to his mother.

The latter turned out to be pointless. When he got home, as normal, she wasn’t there, away working. He took the longest shower of his life. Like chocolate syrup over porcelain vanilla ice cream, the blood and mud swirled hypnotically down the drain. He bandaged his stomach too, and threw out his shirt, and his mother was home from then. She didn’t question the afternoon shower, or how his eye was just beginning to swell and darken. She just gave him a blurry smile and told him dinner was ready.

Ben tried to feel relieved. After a second or third helping of spaghetti, a facsimile of such an emotion came to him.

Regardless, after that terrifying incident, Ben had changed his summer plans from ‘read in the library all day’ to ‘get library books as quickly as possible, barricade himself in his room’. It limited his reading, yes, and he enjoyed the library with its calm atmosphere and high, vaulted windows, but it so far had kept him and his summer days older-boys free. Despite the conditions, he’d still even managed to get three states of his summer reading map filled out.

The road home was made of grey concrete, currently getting fried of the last bit of wetness filling its cracks. Every so often, Ben would side step a dark strip of filler, as he disliked how the way it stickily pulled at the bottom of his shoe. He considered counting his steps, and started to, but began to lose track around 35.

He approached the final turn to his house but paused, something catching his sight. The street, Hancock Street continued on for another quarter mile or so, though Ben took the first of the two left turns available off of it. On the other side of this intersection, however, was a fox. It may have been a large fox, and in fact it was, but Ben had not had enough experience to judge such things. It was stopped, looking similarly shocked stiff as Ben. The bushy redness of its tail was stuck up in the air.

Ben suddenly snapped out of his stupor. The fox didn’t seem too aggressive, so he slid his backpack off of one shoulder, tugging the warm weight of it over to the side of his chest. With a bit of a struggle, he shoved past a tome or two to pull a granola bar out of his bag. He ripped off the silvery wrapping, shoved the trash in his pocket, and tossed it over to the wild animal.

The fox certainly didn’t jump or cower at the flying object. It didn’t growl either. It looked from the bar to Ben with a sort of unamused gaze.

“It’s for you,” Ben urged, starting to feel a bit dumb. Could foxes even eat granola bars? If they ate trash, he figured it couldn’t be too much of a problem for them.

A cold wind brushed against his shoulder. He turned, almost expecting someone to be standing right behind him- But saw no one, of course, because how could someone move that fast?

When he turned around, the fox was gone. The granola bar was too.

Richie was aware he wasn’t brave. Brave people didn’t stay home from school to hide from bullies. They didn’t whine about haunted houses, they went right inside and told the ghosts to fuck right off. Brave people did a whole lot of things that he didn’t do, and he knew them and knew doing them would get his ass surely kicked. Literally or metaphorically. So he didn’t.

So, finding himself diving under a collapsing pile of boxes to push a boy he just met out of the way was a surprise.  
The boxes crashed down over his head, and it wasn’t comfortable, but it wasn’t crushing either. The cardboard were half rotten, providing a soft, wet barrier to their possessions that was as helpful as it was absolutely disgusting. A few tumbled down, nailing him in side- Richie keeled over, instinctively trying to protect his own softer parts. As the odd hail rained down on him he was surprised to find himself not too terrified. Eh, could be worse. 

Something landed with a thump on the back of Richie’s head, and, in one of the oddest sensations he had felt, split from the impact. 

He heard the high, screeching sound of something shattering before the pain even registered. Felt the way something broke on the back of his head, saw the edges of the glittering shards in the dark. The pain cut suddenly on his forehead, on his cheek. He wanted to yelp, to shout, but his jaw seemed as locked as him limbs, half-curled up and as stuck as a turtle in its shell (without the protection).

In what could have seconds, or minutes, the frenzy of motion surrounding Richie seemed to stop. Before moving, he silently decided to never imply a situation could get worse ever again.

Richie opened his eyes, tentatively standing back up. He flinched at the sudden grip on his arm, but it was just Mike, his concerned face bobbing into view.

“Ho- Holy smokes, Richie, are you okay?”

“Can you just say fuck, Mike?” Richie asked shakily, the words supplying themselves of their own accord as his brain tried to fully recalibrate itself. His face really hurt. He brought his hand to the side of his face, touching it softly and pulling away as the dull pain sharpened into a quick, violent spike. Unsurprisingly, the pads of his fingers were stained with blood.

“Ow,” he said, because he supposed he should. Mike gave him a sympathetic grimace.

Richie’s hand fell to his side, and he found himself examining the chaos around him. The mostly-collapsed boxes around him had created a surprisingly thick layer of the floor, one that mostly covered his stained converse. Mike had evidently stepped over it, but apparently had to sidestep a variety of books, ruined furniture, and the complementary shards of glass.

His gaze trailed naturally to the other boy. He was sprawled in such a way that an outsider could have thought he was just relaxing: One leg straight out, the other half folded, arms behind to support him in a half-reclined position. His face ruined this picture, a shocked expression that Richie could only compare to Wiley Coyote, realizing he was floating in the air the moment before he falls. 

“We should probably put a bandage on that…” Mike murmured, frowning, looking torn between earnest concern and wanting to continue exploring. He turned back to Eddie, asking, “You alright?” 

Rather than, say, actually answering the question, he just stared. He seemed to do that an awful lot. He began to mouth something: ‘Why’ would be Richie’s best guess, but maybe he just has a particularly strong craving for gross bread. Then he paled, eyes focusing on Richie’s face. It was slightly creepy, especially so as he took a deep, rattling breath in, eyes fluttering shut as if he were desperately savoring the air. As his eyes opened once more, they were filled with an intensity Richie struggled to identify.

So, of course, Richie used his fantastic ability to jump to conclusions and ignore other people’s feelings.

“You get a concussion or something?” He said, stepping over to Eddie. He tugged out of Mike’s grip, which had suddenly become quite strong. Now he was about a half a foot away from him, certainly close enough to touch. His pupils didn’t seem weird, but his lips were shiny with spit. Richie didn’t think that was a symptom, but he didn’t really know. It probably wasn’t good to stare at another boy’s lips, he thought, and then tried to refocus on the problem at hand.

He quickly clapped a hand to the other boy’s shoulder, trying to push him closer to get a look at the back of his head.

Eddie’s reaction was immediate. He violently flinched away from his hand, head whipping around to face the offending limb. He bared his teeth, an expression which was so odd and foreign to his face, and made a sound. A sound which might have been the closest thing a human could make to a growl, but Richie had never heard a human make such a sound before.

He pulled his hand back as quickly as he could. “Uh, sorry, I-”

The growling did not stop, but in fact seemed to increase in volume. Richie was far more focused on his palm. As the pieces clicked into place, he laughed, the loud, low sound managing to cut through the crescendo.

The growling stopped.

“So, you’re afraid of blood, right?” Richie grinned.

“What?” Eddie hissed, and Richie was fairly sure he heard an echo of Mike whispering it as well.

“Sorry, sorry- Really!” Richie raised his other hand, holding the two up in mock-surrender. He took an exaggerated step back. “I’ll give you your space and all that. Nothing transmittable here.”

Eddie straightened himself, standing stiffly upright with, to Richie, a hilarious look of indignation upon his face. It was almost… cute, if boys could be cute, Richie decided. And they had to be, because some were. Like Eddie.

“_What_ are you— I am not afraid of blood! I am not _afraid_ of _anything_.”

“Sure, you are,” Richie all-but giggled, just as Mike hurriedly suggested, “Why don’t we all leave?”

“Yes, leave,” Eddie snarled.

And, they did. The environment of the house somehow seemed less oppressive with the accompaniment of Eddie. Still frightening, but less like a watchful, evil eye putting all of its attention on them. Regardless, Richie avoided the sight of the sofa.

Eddie opened the door with ease, putting his arms out to the side with a deadpan glare, indicating the open sky to hasten them out. Richie would admit, he never found the sky so beautiful. 

“You’re weird, Richie,” he accused as they stepped out into the warm summer air.

“You just growled at me for, like, ten minutes straight?!”

“Yeah,” he admitted, “but- Nevermind. I _will_ see you again…”

Mike shivered beside him, but Richie took no notice, a smile splitting across his face. “Really? Cool!”

Eddie blinked. He slammed the door shut.

“Well, he’s pretty crazy, right, Mike?” Richie grinned.

“Oh my god, Richie,” Mike croaked. “That was terrifying. What just happened?”

“What’d you mean?” Richie said. “He’s just a bit weird. We are too.”

“I thought he was gonna take a bite out of you down there! And his face got all weird.”

“Eh, you’re just reading into things.”

“Richie, he didn’t leave the house. He just went back inside.”

Richie paused. “So what,” he said finally. “He- He probably just went out the way he came.”

“I don’t know. This just doesn’t make sense.” Mike frowned. “_He_ just doesn't make sense. But I’m gonna get to the bottom of it.”

Richie simply shook his head, dark curls bouncing with the motion.

They didn’t speak much after that. The two took a moment, going across the street to sit on the curb and think about their encounter. After some time had passed, however, just the sight of the house seemed too much, and they each went their separate ways.

Until they met once more, they were unable to get the Kaspbrak home out of their minds, and, even if for entirely different reasons, the boy within.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Happy New Year's Eve y'all!!! Sorry for the lateness and lack of trademark It hand trauma in this chapter. A sneak peak of next chapter: Beverly gets permanently banned from the Derry Public Library and Mike has a long, very interesting conversation with his father. (I don't just have the book tagged for fun, we're throwing that canon in too.)
> 
> Ben Richie  
🤝  
Missing how obviously creepy everything  
is (because they have a crush)


	5. Ghosts, Books, and Advice

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I should probably throw down a warning for sexual harassment in this chapter??? It's not huge but it's there.

“Where’re you heading to in such a hurry?”

Ben stopped dead in his tracks, turning towards the familiar-unfamiliar cheery voice. And likewise, he was both surprised and unsurprised to find Beverly to his left, leaning against an old stone monument, bathed in a rare bit of Derry sunshine. He jumped at the sight of her.

“Beverly!”

“The one and only,” she murmured, sauntering over to him. Ben was short, and she was tall for most girls, and these facts combined left him craning his neck to see her. 

Beverly, personally, got much enjoyment out of all of these facts.

She gave him a half-hearted look over as he stuttered out his answer. He was— Sweaty, mostly, admittedly expected of a teenage boy in the middle of summer. That undeniable human smell mingled with his surprise, a tangy scent which was tantalizingly near to the sweetness of fear but closer still to less pleasant aromas. Oh, Beverly had taken a few squirrels to whittle off the edge of the sharp spike of hunger in her gut; If she hadn’t, she was sure she wouldn’t have been able to calmly make her way through a neighborhood that was more like a stocked fridge. But animals just didn’t _compare._

It wasn’t about taste or texture. She’d like to think, at the very least, she wouldn’t be quite that picky. Human meat was admittedly far better than any flesh she had ever tasted, but without it, it was as if a small hole formed in her chest. A gnawing hunger. Anything else was— Unsatisfying. Unfulfilling. Un_filling._ She could try her best to sate it with sewer rats and fawns, tease every little emotion out of their simple neurons, but it would fail to do just that. 

And when Bill had tried to abstain (she had always known he cared rather more about it then she did) and had managed to hold out much longer, that ended… Shittily.

So, to say the least, she wasn’t quite sure why she had kept the granola bar.

“But, yeah, the library’s cool,” Ben said, finishing an impromptu, unrequested deluge of information, one she’d missed entirely. He gave an awkward wave over to the old brick-and-stone building: The Derry Library, named _so_ originally sometime in 1870s. Never her haunt of choice, Bill was usually the one searching through its yellowed texts for something for Stan. It had certainly changed, growing a jaundice much like an old photo, additions of glass and concrete extending out where there was once only cobblestone paths.

“Oh. Well, you won’t mind if I tag along, right?”

“What? I mean, no, I mean ye— Totally.” The boy blushed, turning away to walk towards the direction of the building, before looking back nervously to make sure she followed. Beverly’s own strides were nearly twice his, and a leisurely pace set her next to him. “Are you looking for something in particular? I might be able to help you find it?”

Georgie came back into the forefront of her mind. “I suppose I am,” she grimaced.

“Okay! Well, don’t worry, I’ve got the Dewey Decimal down flat,” Ben supplied cheerfully. He stopped at the sudden curb separating them from the library grounds, obediently looking both ways. 

Beverly, instead, walked into the oncoming traffic. Ben’s small gasp might have been drowned out by the screaming breaks and curses and honking horns if it hadn’t been for her superior hearing. She gave a quick wave and grin to the rage-filled passengers, but paid them no mind. Instead she looked back at the frozen boy, and with a jerk of her head, motioned for him to continue. And, after a moment, he hurriedly did so.

“Do you spend a lot of time at the library, Ben?” Beverly asked, glancing down at him.

“Uh, yeah, I guess so. The librarians are pretty nice, they have pretty good air conditioning. Certainly beats my house as a way to spend the summer. Are— Are you alright?”

She squinted at the question. “I’m in one piece, aren’t I?” She looked down at her body, not that she thought she could be that oblivious to her own form. The flowing cream of her dress wasn’t even stained.

“Yeah, but— Nevermind,” he murmured, tugging absentmindedly at his ear. He was afraid, yes, she could smell it even as it was overwhelmed with the clouds of sickly exhaust and touches of freshly cut grass. Her intention; but it was odd, how he lingered on the feeling. 

She considered her options. Could mock him about it. Could delve into his psyche, try to find the source of his hesitance. Could be a satisfying, easy-to-use trauma, or nothing at all. And that wasn’t exactly easy to do anyway. Could linger on his loneliness, ask him about it, she could feel it just simmering against the surface of his subconscious— Or just abandon him and come back to him later. Could just kill him too. They needed something to eat so soon after hibernation, it’d be their top priority if it wasn’t for Georgie. 

She _should_ probably do any number of those things.

Beverly prided herself on her unpredictability. She did not.

In lieu of such things, in fact, she skipped the steps up to the library’s broad doors, popping one open for Ben. “Lead the way.”

He laughed, a surprisingly low sound from the boy. “So, do you want to tell me what you’re looking for?”

“No, no,” she said, before adding, “You can get your stuff first.”

She scanned the room, the new building on old, old land she knew like the back of one of her proper, hairy, spindly legs. 

The entrance area to the library was a small, nasty room, obviously not cared for in either a physical or emotional way. Beverly took a moment to kick at the mud-stained floor, barely making a scuff in the dried dirt, before looking back up. To the left of her, a small alcove meant for coats but instead occupied solely by boxes of abandoned things; Hats, scarves, and dreams; To the back, a large, brick-walled room with high shelves of books and old cushioned seats; To the right, a glass hallway, painted in sunlight and warmth. Of the three, she’d prefer the coat closet by far.

But, unsurprisingly, Ben was already walking slowly towards the right, keeping her in his line of vision. _A smart decision,_ she thought as she caught up with him. The shine of the hallway was almost painful to her eyes, shielded so long from the light in the sewers, then protected in the forest by the canopy of leaves.

“This is the kid’s section,” he explained. “Though you probably knew that. Of course you did. Sorry.”

“I didn’t, actually.”

“Oh. Um, well, I was just going to pick up a few things, it shouldn’t take too long.”

The ‘kid’s section’ was laid out similarly to the other room of the library, with rows of significantly shorter shelves, plenty of marker-stained tables to sit at, and beanbags that she was sure even a human could smell across a room. Ben scurried off to one of the shelves, stout form disappearing behind it. While he searched, she eavesdropped on the only other humans present save the librarian— Though to call them children seemed a misnomer. Four greasy boys, tall and strong, moving to leave the room from the other end of it. They had their faces shoved in a wrinkled magazine.

“God,” groaned one with his hair styled in a uniquely ugly way, “I didn’t _believe_ it when you said some nerd magazine had tits in it!”

“I told you, Henry,” the ravenette replied excitedly. “Jackoff material, right here for taking.”

“Wish her face wasn’t so ugly,” added the third, skinny as a twig and blond. The chubby one snickered.

Beverly rolled her eyes. Humans and their love of _fucking_. All it ever did was cause trouble, made them do awful, nasty things, but they couldn’t stop their biological urge to rut like animals. To be, quite literally, on top.

She looked back over to the quartet. Much to her surprise they had not left the building. In fact, they were stopped right over where Ben was. They didn’t even bother trying to be quiet with their heckling, circled around a figure not tall enough to be seen.

A possessive, animal part of her lurched violently.

Beverly was behind the shelf in a flash. They stood around him in a circle, the blonde holding his arm twisted behind his back. Ben squirmed at the sight of her, but Twiggy kept his grip, staring blankly. Her guess at the leader, Henry, turned to her with a look of rage upon his rat-like face at being interrupted. When he caught sight of her, however, it dropped to blankness. He scanned her fleshy young body once up and down, slow as could be.

Chubby wolf-whistled.

“Hey, you new in town sweetheart?” Henry keened.

“Let go of him,” she replied curtly.

Henry nodded his head toward Twiggy’s direction, and he did as he was bid. Ben dropped to the floor with a thump, scrambling for where his books lay splayed on the floor.

The dark-haired one groaned, rolling his eyes. “C’mon, Hen—”

“Can it, Patrick.” Henry pushed past him, running a hand through the short front of his hair. He stepped very, very close to Beverly. “Why don’t we ditch this loser and we ‘n you can have a good time?”

She deeply considered dropping the act then and there. Instead, she pushed past him towards Ben.

“You frigid little bitch!” he exclaimed. She ignored him, offering a hand for Ben to pull himself up with. Tentatively, he took it, the other clutching his books to his chest. When Henry grabbed her arm, a grip that would have bruised if she could have, she ground down on her teeth to keep from biting his stupid little face off.

“If you touch me again, I am going to scream,” she said. “The librarian will come over, and she’ll have no problem telling your father. I’m sure she’ll have plenty to say. You don’t want that, right, Henry?”

He gaped at her, while his friends shared glances laced with confusion or nervousness. She stared right back, orange eyes empty.

Finally, he shoved her, and he barely masked his surprise when she didn’t even step back. “You’re gonna get what’s coming to you, whore. You and that little shit.”

With that, he turned around and left, metaphorical hackles high. The other followed, murmuring their disappointment in slurs under their breath. As they disappeared down the glass hallway, Ben immediately began to speak.

“Beverly, I— You didn’t have to do that! Are you alright? I’m so sorry!”

“I’m fine. You worry about me too much,” she remarked.

“Why did you do that? Now the Bowers Gang is gonna go after you too.” He looked deeply distressed at the thought.

“Because you’re my—” She cut herself, not entirely sure what words were about to pass by her lips. ‘Morning snack’ was what she would’ve said just days ago, but something was clearly wrong with it now. She’d even _helped_ him when he was scared. A meal didn’t even cross her mind doing it, at least not one with him as the main course. But what else could a human be to her? “Nevermind. Are they the ones that have been after you?”

Ben gave her a quizzical look. “Uh, yeah, I guess. How did you know that?”

“Lucky guess. If they come after you again, lead them over the sewer opening in the woods.”

“Why? I don’t think there’s any good places to hide in there.”

“Don’t hide,” she clarified quickly. “Get away, and stay away. Far away.”

He looked doubtful, but didn’t protest anymore. He began to move, and she followed, but raised an eyebrow as they headed towards where the librarian sat rather than the exit. She tugged on where their hands were, in fact, still entwined.

“Where are you going?”

“To check out my books.” He blushed suddenly, and his hand wiggled as if to move from her grip. After a second or two, she let go, and he pulled away with another soft apology she didn't quite understand.

He walked up to the librarian’s desk, handing her the thick stack of books. She leveled him a look over her glasses Beverly couldn’t understand the meaning behind, then opened one, stamping it like a red-hot iron against the flank of a horse. As she began to do this down the line of them, Beverly scanned the shelf she leaned against, most of it boring fluff seemingly intended to pacify children. They were thinner than the tomes she was used to, and wrapped in a clear, thin substance that was unfamiliar to her. The one that caught her eye was free of it, a shiny paperback book of ornithology. Something definitively _Stanley_, she thought with a slight grin.

With a parting wave to the old woman, Ben returned to her.

“You didn’t pay for it?” she questioned.

“Well, no, it’s… A library.”

“Yeah, I understand that part. So, you’re stealing it from the library?”

“No!” Ben exclaimed. “I just checked it out. Under my card. That’s what you do at libraries?”

“Your card?” She cocked her head to the side in a canine manner.

“Yes, my _library_ card.”

“Oh. Well, I’ll take this book then,” she said, grabbing the book she had been eyeing.

“You— You have to check it out then!”

Beverly crossed her arms, book still in hand. “I don’t have a library card.”

“I can do it for you!” he stuttered.

“And what if I can’t return it?”

Confusion and conflict played across his face, with that certain intensity found almost solely in small children when asked whether they’d like chocolate ice cream or vanilla (or other such important decisions).

“Why not?” he asked desperately.

“Long story.” She paused, peering over his shoulder. “She’s not looking, I’m gonna run now.”

Ben sighed, before hurriedly whispering, “No, no— Wait for me!”

Mike stared down at the grainy wood of the dining room table, ignoring his plate in front of him. There wasn’t anything interesting about the wood— It was the same dark, polished, nicked-and-smudged wood he had eaten at since he was old enough to sit out of a high chair. It didn’t particularly matter, after all, his mind was focused on “Eddie” or “Ben” or whoever the mysterious boy _really_ was.

Thoughts in the clouds, he began to pick at the smooth edge of an old stain. His mother, sitting to his left, batted his hand away.

“Mikey, you better eat your eggs before they get cold,” she cautioned.

He murmured a response, nudging the yellow mass on his plate with his fork. He couldn’t help but think it resembled the spongy mold clinging to the walls of the Kaspbrak house. He tried to push the disgusting thought from his head, taking a forkful of it and placing it into his mouth.

He watched his father on the other side of the table. He, too, looked the same as he always did—he had a blue chambray work shirt tucked into a worn pair of jeans, though it was all obscured by the newspaper he read. Mike could just see his furrowed brow peaking over the top.

He swallowed his mouthful, and finally worked up the courage to speak his thoughts.

“Hey, dad,” he began as casually as he could. “Do you know anything about Sonia Kaspbrak?”

His mother froze, but quickly recovered, returning to buttering her toast with a slow shake of her head. His father put down the newspaper, neatly folding it and setting it upon the table.

“I haven’t heard the name in years, son,” he said slowly. “Where’d you hear about them?”

Mike hesitated. He didn’t want to lie to his father, but it wasn’t as if he could tell him the truth.

“I just heard the name around. I thought they were new in town?”

He let out a chuckle, though there was no humor in it. “No, no— Well, they were new once, but that was a good long time before you were born.”

Mike waited a moment for him to continue, but as he took a bite of his own scrambled eggs, it was clear he would have to prompt his father to continue.

“So? What happened to them?”

Over her son’s head, Mrs. Hanlon leveled a look at her husband. He ignored it.

“It’s not a very nice story, Mike. You sure you don’t want to hear about something else over breakfast?” he offered.

“I can handle it,” he protested. “You’ve told me worse, probably.”

The glare over the boy’s shoulder deepened. This time, there was a sheepish smile in return.

“Well, don’t you want to spare your poor mother?” he said. There was a teasing tone in the pleasantly low rumble of his voice.

Mike turned to the poor mother in question, who simply sighed, brushing the crumbs from the front of her dress. “You ought to, but I know you won’t. Maybe a good scare will get this curious streak out of you.”

Mike had time to give a look of comic offense before his father’s large hand came down to give a teasing rub to the curls on top of his head. He protested, immediately, loudly, batting away the offensive appendage, but the smile matching his parents’ own was unmistakable.

“C’mon Dad!” The boy silently planned where to look in the library if he put his foot down. However, he had no need, as his father began.

“Well, it all began— What, twenty five years ago?”

Mrs. Hanlon made an affirmative noise, picking up her plate and taking it over to the kitchen.

“Mighta been earlier than that,” he murmured under his breath. “Anyway, I never really knew them. Quite a big thing though, new people moving in. Couldn’t have missed it.

“It was just Sonia and her husband at first. I heard she was… Unpleasant, and he was very meek, but that was all, nothing noteworthy— ‘cept they spent all their money refurbishing that old well house. I'm sure you’ve seen it now, Mikey, I’m sure. Guess that work was all for nothin’. Anywho, they had a child, as couples eventually settle down and do. A boy, I think?” He paused, shaking his head. “Poor thing. The Mr. Kaspbrak died so soon after, so suddenly. Just the two of them then. And that’s where it all went wrong.”

He leaned back in his chair, closing his eyes tight for a moment as he recalled the dark memories from so long ago. “I don’t know if it was just hearsay, but they said she was never the same after. Never let the boy outside and— that sorta thing. Then, when he died, it wasn’t too hard for them to jump on her and call her a killer.” He frowned. “If they really cared so much, I don’t know why _they_ didn’t intervene sooner.”

Mike thought of boarded, moldy windows and pale little Eddie with his shaking hands. The bloody recliner too.

“What happened to Sonia?” Mike asked, trying to keep the tremor out of his voice.

“Well, there’s all sorts of stories, but as far as I’m aware, she left town before they went as far as to press charges.” He shifted uncomfortably. “Or worse. Never seen lick of her since. Everyone practically forgot about it after a few months.”

Mike pressed his lips tightly together, staring down at the table. Whatever happened to her, she certainly didn’t leave Derry, at least alive. And the kid... He felt twisted inside, but there was no way he could tell his father. There was no way he could tell anyone… Except Richie. As a matter of fact, he had to _warn_ him.

Across the table, William Hanlon watched his son’s face twist. It wasn’t too hard to connect the dots. He knew Mike loved to learn about the town’s history, and he in turn loved to share that with him— But perhaps this was a bit of it too frightening a tale; or an even more concerning thought, too tempting to investigate. 

“Mike.”

He looked up, brown eyes wide. 

“Promise me this: Don’t go looking ‘round that house. It’s a bad place. Cursed, I swear, and a death trap besides that.”

The boy gave the question due consideration, the silence interrupted solely by the gentle clanging of the dishes being washed.

“Alright. Can I go outside now?”

With a tender smile, he nodded. “Sure. Just come back before sundown, right?”

“Right,” he echoed with a grin.

And with that, Mike ran off to find Richie, hoping he didn’t have to break either of his promises.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Sorry for the lack of update y'all, had a bad streak but I should be better! Hopefully this is an okay apology gift, finally putting down some lore eyyyyy. Thank you for sticking with me, your comments fill my heart with warmth and evil plot ideas. And over 100 kudos??? Thank you SO much everyone!!
> 
> A preview for the next chapter: Ben finally crosses paths with Richie and Mike; Mike shares his theory. Eddie is also there.


	6. Boys and Books

Who would have thought the house on Neibolt Street could become boring? It still had that terrifying air to it (not the delightful spore-asbestos mix that released whenever you so much as touched a wall, the _metaphorical_ air), but it was a monotonous sort of dread. It was how Richie imagined death-row criminals felt— _Just get it over with, eh?_

Then again, he hadn’t dared go inside again. Maybe… Wait, no, that’s dumb as shit.

Really, what had Richie’s life come to? He should be messing around in the arcade! Impressing girls with his skills! (Or anyone at all!) But he had tried that, for a total of thirty whole minutes, and it just felt so empty. He wanted to—blegh, he could hardly admit it in his own head—talk to people. _Real_ people.

And outside of the lovely Micheal, Richie perhaps, just maybe, didn’t have that many friends. And Mike had fucked off for the last few days to God knows where, so he was looking for Eddie.

It was a stupid plan, in retrospect. There was no way he could actually be spending time in the house willingly, it was just a coincidence they met up in that weird basement. There was no reason for the other boy to be hanging out there, as he probably wasn’t, in fact, squatting there to do hard drugs.

So, the logical course of action was to take out his frustration on the house. He got up from his squatting place across the street, grabbed a rock, and slung it at the decaying building. In the five seconds it took for the rock to bang off the panelling, Richie had enough time to experience the five stages of grief, and then the stupid house had the nerve to not live up to his horrified expectations. Nothing happened! Not a single effing thing!

It just stared back, old yellowed windows like cloudy eyes, as judging as his mother and as disappointed as his father.

And that, in a short summary he was already planning to recount should anyone attempt to reprimand him, was how Richie Tozier ended up squatted under an oak tree, chucking rocks like a movie teen delinquent. 

“Can you stop that?” a voice piped up, somewhat bitchy.

Richie doubted his conscience was making a very late appearance— He looked over to where the voice had been, behind him, in the vague direction of a dried out husk of a tree. He walked over, and was greeted with a confusing sight.

It wasn’t that the sight of the boy sitting under that tree had been odd or surprising. Quite the opposite. He was vaguely familiar to Richie, and it bothered him, because his mind seemed to remember both his face and Eddie’s at school, but at the same time his mind seemed to argue that Eddie should be there, and also that, no, he shouldn’t, it should be Ben alone, and that was about the time Richie got distracted by his nose bleed.

“Aw shit.”

Ben moved his head from its resting place on his arm, seeming to notice Richie’s new, closer location for the first time. He didn’t look impressed.

“Uh, I think I have a tissue,” he said with a frown. Then added, “Don’t bleed on my book.”

“Nice to know where I stand in your priorities,” Richie scoffed, but his heart wasn’t in it. He was too distracted trying to place where and when he had seen the round-faced boy before. The aching in between his eyes intensified.

“You’re the one who interrupted my reading.” From the depths of his cargo shorts, Ben offered up a single crumpled tissue. Richie took it with a swipe of his arm.

“And you’re the one who interrupted my rock throwing,” he finished. He wiped his upper lip with it, before twisting the paper to shove it up his nose. Why doctors got paid so much Richie had no clue, this shit was easy. “What’s your name? I’m Richie.”

“I’m Ben,” said Ben, predictably, and that really ruffled his feathers because hadn’t Eddie said he was the new kid and the new kid was right in front of him and not Eddie and—

Jeez, it was probably just a slip of the tongue back there, or simple confusion, or something else. Maybe he was lying. Richie didn’t care. He barely knew the kid (not just Eddie, Ben too, the two very separate individuals) and there was no reason to get into a fuss over it.

His distress had leaked onto his face, at least based on the concerned look Ben was giving him.

“What’re you reading?” Richie asked, squatting down next to him.

Ben tilted up the cover of the book from its place in his lap for him to read: _History of Derry: A Bicentennial Celebration!_

Richie wrinkled his nose. “You’re starting on school reading already?”

“No,” he said confusedly. “I just… wanted to read it.”

“Why? Reading’s gross. It’s _so_ boring.”

Ben rolled his eyes. “_Clearly,_ you just haven’t read the right book.”

“Eh, whatever.” Richie dropped down into the dry, dying grass. He leaned back, the dusty ground immediately beginning to rub off and stick to the sweat on his palms. “So, reading here… You’re not scared of the Kaspbrak house?”

Ben gave a distrustful glance at the building, as if it were listening into the conversation. “No, I’m not,” he lied. “It’s just a house after all.”

Richie laughed. “Sure, man.”

With that, Ben turned back to his book without a care. Richie, feeling considerably awkward and plenty ready to go home and feel sorry for his lonely self, only had time to stand up and see a biking figure on the horizon.

“HEYO, MIKE!” he called out. Richie ignored Ben’s groan of irritation. “I’VE BEEN LOOKIN’ ALL OVER FOR YOU!”

The boy in question approached, sweating and seeming on the edge of panting. He took his place leaning against the tree, over Ben’s sandy-brown head. After a moment, and a bulging of eyes, he noticed him, and evidently had recovered enough to stand up straight. Ben continued to pretend to be reading his book.

“Uh, hi,” Mike said, because his parents had taught him to be polite, unlike, he thought, _some_ boys. Then he got to business. “Richie, we gotta get away from here.”

The teen in question scrunched up his face, a wrinkled mix of confusion and disagreement. “Why?”

Evidently, that was not the answer Mike wanted. He threw an arm towards the house. He jerked his head at Ben. He glared at Ben. He followed it up with an apologetic look. He glared at Richie then, who just raised an eyebrow. _He_ did not receive an apologetic look.

Richie ignored him, crouching down at Ben’s level. “So me and Mike went into the Kaspbrak house — cool, right? — and there was a boy in there! He was kinda creepy, looked like a nerd, now Mike here thinks he’s a ghost. There, now you’re all filled in.” Then he stood up again.

“You happy now, Hanlon? Can we have a conversation like two well adjusted teenagers?”

With his face in his hands, he groaned, “I hate you so much.”

Ben put his book to the side once again, this time with considerably more force, and stood up. “Will you two just spit it out and _leave_?”

“Nah dude, apparently you’re a part of the super secret murder mystery now—”

“I know he’s a ghost,” Mike interrupted, shoving a finger into Richie’s chest, “and I have proof!”

“Oh?”

“Myra Kaspbrak had a son,” he said. After a dramatic pause: “_Eddie_ Kaspbrak.”

Richie guffawed. “So, they have the same name. That’s just coincidence.”

“No, it’s not at all! You’re just saying that ‘cause you like him.”

“I— I don’t!”

“Bullshit!” Mike exclaimed. Richie was pretty sure he’d never heard him swear before. “That’s the only reason you haven’t realized!”

“Okay, smartass. Riddle me this: Why would the ghost of some dead lady’s kid pretend to be Ben?”

“Ben?” he asked blankly. The large, sandy-haired boy raised his hand. Mike’s dark eyes went blurry for a moment, then he shook his head, an apology on his lips. “Oh, sorry. I— I don’t know, Richie. It doesn’t matter. The point is, if he’s a ghost, he’s stuck inside the house. And he’s probably the one who killed his mom! Because he killed her, or, or, _something,_ I haven’t worked that part out yet. So we should all leave, immediately!”

“What are you talking about?” A voice piped up from behind them. The three of them jumped, and Mike would later argue with Richie over which one of them let out the shriek.

It was Eddie. In the sunlight he looked better, though it only highlighted the weird sheen to his skin. The deep, wheezing breath he took, followed by a cheshire cat grin on his face didn’t help matters. Maybe Mike had a point, Richie thought, but then remembered that ghosts weren’t real, and that if so, he wasn’t in his haunted house and: “I fucking told you! Told you he wasn’t a ghost!” he exclaimed, returning the chest poke he had received earlier.

Mike looked rather shattered. And terrified. Maybe now wasn’t the time to gloat.

Eddie just arched an eyebrow. “Me?”

“Yeah,” Richie said. Eddie’s grin spread wider, if possible, letting out a giggle.

There was a beat of silence. Mike still looked like he wanted to bolt, Eddie was still smiling but his big brown eyes were not, and Ben was still attempting to fade into the tree behind him.

Apparently having worked up the courage to speak, Mike accused, “Why did you pretend to be Ben?”

“Who’s Ben?” Eddie asked with a scoff. “Just ‘cause you mistook me for someone when we met doesn’t mean—”

“I’m not talking about that!” he snapped. “I’m talking about whatever _stuff_ you have going on! Why do I feel like I want to vomit whenever I even look at Ben?! And don’t think I didn’t notice Richie’s nosebleed when I got here!” — “Don’t drag me into this!” — “That’s not normal. None of this is! And I may be the only one who sees it, but I know it has to do with _you_!”

“If I’m some sort of monster to you, then maybe you should leave me alone, _for your sake,_” the pale boy hissed.

Really, what was the state of the world when he, Richie Tozier, needed to be the one to calm people down. “Hey! No one’s calling anyone a monster.”

Somehow, that managed to silence the two boys, though that seemed to be because Eddie was too busy looking at Richie as if he had said the earth was flat.

Much to the surprise of all humans present, Ben was the one who broke the silence.

“Does ‘stuff’ include photos?”

Now it was Mike’s turn to gawk. “What?”

“Well, I just,” he paused, forming his thoughts. He didn’t appear to like being the center of attention, and unlike the appearance of Eddie Kaspbrak, that was the truth. “I found something weird in this book.”

“I thought this was history, not playboy,” Richie joked lamely, nervously. 

Ben had picked up his book again, and was flipping through it with intent. Mike had already moved to go crouch and read over his shoulder, deeply curious and relieved to have the opportunity to put some distance between him and Eddie.

“So I have this friend, she—”

“Ooh, is she your girlfriend?”

Ben continued to power through. “She told me she lived here a long time, I hadn’t seen her but I don’t know, maybe she’s from Bangor? But then I saw this picture back in the ‘turn of the century’ section.” He pointed a thick finger at an older girl to the edge of a group of well dressed schoolchildren, blurry around the edges, as if walking away. She was pretty, Richie supposed. Her eyes (focused off camera) and hair (a swirl around her) must have been light, though the black-and-off-white sepia made the exact color unknowable. “You don’t know her, but she’s _identical_. I thought it might have been her great-grandmother or something, but if you’re talking about ghosts...”

As Ben bit down on his lip, Richie got the feeling he didn’t want to be saying what he was saying. Richie also didn’t want him to be saying what he was saying.

“If she was at the old Kitchener for that photo, I think you’re onto something,” Mike said drily.

“What?” Richie asked. He pointed to the headline in explanation. _Tragedy Strikes: Ironwork Explosion Kills 200._

Ben began to flip forward, back to where his bookmark laid at the very end of the book. Evidently it had been made in the seventies, with the amount of hippies photographed. His eyes were focused elsewhere, however. Richie traced their path to a faded image almost tucked away at the bottom of the page.

It was a parade, tie-dyed and flowered. In the background a few militant looking citizens hinted at confrontation just after the shutter snapped shut. But the eye flowed all too easily to an alleyway just barely in frame. It was too dark to make out the details within, though like a particularly dark game of eye-spy, Richie checked off a bony, thin hand curling out into the light to grasp that corner of a brick wall. A young boy happily tugged an older, concerned-looking girl towards that void.

The girl was unfamiliar and unimportant. The boy was not. The boy was thin and sickly looking and _Eddie._

“Fuck,” Richie said empathically. Mike murmured his agreements.

A moment of silence passed.

“Y’know,” he began again, anxiously, “maybe there’s a perfectly reasonable explanation to this! Why don’t we ask Eddie?”

Mike wanted to protest that he had been both lying the entire time and may well be the entire source of this supernatural problem. However, as he and Richie both turned around, they both realized the same thing at the same time.

Eddie Kaspbrak was gone.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> [kronk voice] oh yeah it's all coming together
> 
> when will I not confidently begin a chapter and think I'll have it done in a week then take two months (as well as not replying to all the lovely ppl who took the time to leave a comment)? never. thanks for sticking with me y'all. preview for the next chapter: a sneak-peak of what Bill and Stan have been up to— and dare I say more interestingly, Georgie.


	7. Interlude

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> tw for a single use of the r slur and some non-graphic violence

Down, down, deep in the sewers, Bill attempted to turn a blind eye to the events occurring above.

He sat folded up to an almost impossible degree in an alcove of the arching ceiling, his bare, knobby knees poking against his equally thin shoulders. From where Bill crouched inward, his back nudged the stone wall. Every so often he would lean forward, and the sticky webbing that was practically invisible in that spot could for a moment be seen, stretching thinly from where he had met it. Through his tattered shirt, the awkward arch of his spine was visible, and the violent poke of his shoulder blades as he stretched and moved.

Overall, the not-quite-a-boy looked mighty uncomfortable. Perhaps he would have been, if his bones weren’t so malleable.

On the subject of malleability, the clay in Bill’s hands paled in comparison. Bill could slip into forms in a terrified blink of an eye— So could the rest of them, but he had a sort of knack to finding what would really get to a man. And in an odd sort of irony, he did it the least.

But the clay, the clay had no such abilities. It had to be shaped by another, forced to hold its form by the heat of fire, unable to be changed afterwards (or fixed if one failed). Maybe that’s why Bill chose it, the knowledge of its permanence, the knowledge that if he failed, if he made one mistake, it was ruined. Or because he knew that he was bad at it, because he rarely did it, and he knew he would fail. There’s a sort of comfort of knowing how things will turn out, even if it’s horrible.

None of these thoughts consciously crossed his mind, at least. He just thought of the awfully convenient deposits hiding under the lake of the Nest, and how much time he had to be alone with his thoughts, and chose to _not_.

He squinted at the odd ball shape resting in his hands, gently twisting it this way and that. He wanted to make a dove— He’d remembered Stan mentioning it once, twice, over the many, many decades they’d spent in each other’s company. The last time he’d said it...

(It was a fair in the 18th century. All of them there, save Georgie, still curled up in an egg, a hole in his heart he didn’t yet know to miss. Big tents with red and white stripes, clowns honking in between lines of booths. How convenient, a place filled with children, and staffed by a thing that most children trusted wholeheartedly and the others absolutely feared. Rather than doing any sort of hunting, Eddie and Stan spent half the time tricking concession stands into giving them 'candy floss', some pink sweet that was barely tolerable to even the humans that could actually digest it. Stan ate most of it, and after vomiting back up spent the week cursing it out to Bill. When he eventually caved and tried some of it, Stan refused to stop laughing at the face he made, a rare lack of stoicism from him. 

He murmured it half way up the Ferris Wheel, Bill’s arm slung half around him. The only thing he could make out, that pleasant single-syllable word, softly added at the end. Stan looked up then, suddenly, and didn’t say anything after. Practically nothing else to him till a cycle later.

The only other notable thing was some odd, look-alike humans Beverly had found: Twins, they were called, and it meant double the meat for their large, odd brood. But that memory paled in comparison.)

But what did a dove look like? He hardly remembered. He didn’t think they were all that threatening, something he recalled with a bit of offended confusion. Did they have one set of wings or two? He tried to shape one, off the side of the lump, but misjudged this strength; His fingers, grey a few shades lighter than the clay that coated them, sunk deep into it.

Unsurprisingly, ruined. Failure. Awful. Bad.

He set down the clay with a sigh, though perhaps it was more of a throwing, accompanied with a childish huff that fit his current form. He unfolded himself, rolling up each vertebrae of his spine against the coldness of the wall, stretching the tad excessive length of his legs. Then he stood up.

Bill walked over to the edge of the alcove, sitting down, throwing his bare feet over the side of it. He peered out into the webbed abyss, wondering where Stan had got to. As worry began to take hold, he heard an unfamiliar clicking, followed by a shriek. Suddenly, from a parting in the glittering strands a small, mid-colored thing began to swoop and arch. 

For a second, Bill thought it was a bat, but then realized it was a bird, and questioned what world he would have to be in for Stan to choose _not_ to fly on feathered wings. The details were hard to make out on such a quickly moving object, even for him. 

Very soon after its appearance, it took an unexpected dive towards him, deep hooked beak opened in a scream- Bill only raised an arm in half-hearted defense, a grin playing on his lips as it exploded in feathers. Stan now stood, looking human as ever, and just as serious (at least on the surface), leaning down over him.

“I thought you were sculpting?”

“I— I was. Didn’t work out.”

Stan gave a murmur of acknowledgement. He sat down next to him, reddish eyes flickering from the spider-silk woven expanse to Bill’s own blue-and-yellow pair.

“Wh- What kinda bird was that?”

“_Steatornis caripensis_. ‘Oilbird.’ They live in caves in South America. Apparently they have some of the most sensitive eyes, ever.” Stan bit his lip, cutting himself off. He’d practically memorized the last book of ornithology he’d found, but he doubted Bill really wanted to hear that.

“That’s cool. But they’re pretty small,” Bill remarked.

“They only have a wingspan of 90 centimeters,” Stan offered.

Bill gave a skeptical look. “You duh— don’t exactly have to follow those rules.”

He frowned, squinting a bit at Bill. “Maybe. But I want to.”

They all toed the line between reality and unreality, shape-shifting between impossibilities- All of them except Stan, it seemed to Bill. He liked to be one thing or the other, human or inhuman, animal or monster. Save, of course, the way that control lapsed when he fell asleep. Frankly, that was just charming. But Bill stood there with his grey skin, popping bones, glowing half-yellow eyes and too many teeth when you looked too long at his face, but somehow still in the undeniable shape of a boy. Stan, on the other hand, looked the picture of natural: With a blush in his cheeks, and the curls of his brown hair falling in his face, soft curves to the sharp edge of his jaw. His chest even rose and fell, an unnecessary fragility. Bill didn’t understand it, but he supposed he didn’t need to.

Instead, he said, “When we get Gu— Georgie back, I was gonna grab some charcoal. W— Wanna come?”

Stan shook his head.

“We could find you a new book? I think yours rotted away.”

That got a bit more consideration. For all Stan has come to resist leaving the safety of their den, his voracious appetite in books of all things could still draw him out. 

“I really hate when that happens,” he remarked. Bill took that as a yes.

Stan added suddenly, “I know you’re worried. You should relax.”

Bill couldn’t help it. He laughed, a bark of a sound. “How can I? I— I don’t know where Georgie is, or— or Eddie, or Beverly—”

“Hey, they can take care of themselves,” Stan argued.

“Georgie can’t. I was s— stupid to think so. He doesn’t understand his abilities — I, I mean, do any of us? — He’s easily _frightened_, and— I’m just going to go up and—”

“He’ll be okay, there’s no need.”

“_Stop interrupting me!_” Sometime after the words left his mouth, his bony hands ended up gripping Stan’s neatly pressed shirt collar. His face was flushed with blood he didn’t have, teeth bared, but the curly-haired boy was nonplussed, simply raising an eyebrow in a response. Thoroughly chastised, he let go, and tried to return to the casual resting position he had minutes ago. 

A moment of silence passed, then Stan was speaking to him, a wry smile on his face. “What happened to me isn’t gonna happen to him, Big Bill.”

“That’s— That’s not what I’m worried about,” he protested.

“Right.”

“Maybe I am being irrational. It’s just,” Bill elaborated, “I wish I could watch over them. You understand.” He meant those last two words as a statement, but it came out like the smallest question. Thankfully, Stan just nodded without comment.

Eddie was certainly the one most in-tune with Derry itself, the back alleys and paths and manmade eyesores like a second skin. Another good reason to have sent him looking for Georgie, in retrospect. A fortunate ability, which seemed to have taken a toll on all the other ones— He was the weakest of the bunch save the youngest, and the latter was growing stronger by the year. Bill had no reason to be jealous of him for _that_, but still, in the moment? He’d trade in a heartbeat.

He felt a pressure on his arm, and turned his head to see Stan leaning against it.

“I’m bored. Want to tell me one of your stories?”

That finally got a smile out of Bill, small as it was. He took the gifted distraction with as much happiness as he could muster.

“Did I— Did I ever finish telling you the one about the ghost? No? W— Well, where did I stop…”

Georgie was sad to go. Really, really sad. Mr. Gray was very nice, and gave him food (even if he couldn’t eat it) and a bed (even if he didn’t really need it) and many other things. But there were two problems. One: He was really tired of being a dog. Two: Mr. Gray’s aroma was even nicer than his personality was.

He’d known that since he met him. He came over because he wanted a snack, and the snack was him, which he did feel bad about now. He felt even sadder, but then got distracted by his stomach growling, which reminded him that Bill wanted him to hunt.

His big older brother trusted him enough to let him go alone! He had been very proud, and was sure he could do it, but now he wasn’t quite so. He hadn’t eaten Mr. Gray, after all. How could you eat someone that was nice? Georgie was sure that no matter how good Eddie smelled, he wouldn’t eat him.

It did not cross Georgie’s mind that the soft-hearted man would spend the next few months wondering where his favorite cat Christine had gone. After all, the sole reason he left the collar behind the bushes was because he knew to clean up after himself. It was only polite.

So, he let his body lose its grip on that uncomfortable form, to shrink into a shining bubble, and float out the window while the man was busy huddling over the stove, making his dinner. It was a wonderful feeling, to fly, though this wasn’t the same as the swooping and diving Stan joined him in, or the falls that Bevvy had taught him to land. It was much more free.

And with a pop, he was a little human in the street. That was one of his favorite forms. He had a lot of thoughts on humans— He knew Bill didn’t talk about them much and Beverly didn’t like them and Stan was afraid of them and that, by elimination, made Eddie the best one to talk about them with. Eddie had lots of thoughts on them too, ones that seemed to rarely overlap and more often contradicted each other. A puzzle just for him.

Georgie trotted down the pavement on his legs — Only two! It was quite hard to stay balanced, but he managed, teetering back and forth like a bird in rough wind — until something picked up the attention of his sensitive ears. 

It was music. Once upon a time, his oldest, bestest brother had brought down a magical horn called a phonograph, which could play music whenever they wanted. Unfortunately, the Nest did not provide conditions to make things last (nor did their near constant use of it) and it broke after a very short year. But the child’s love for music had not left him with it, and he followed the sound as if it were the smell of fresh blood.

He finally reached the end of his search. Four boys, piled up in a rusty old pick-up truck. The windows were rolled down, the music blasted to a hearing-ruining degree. But the youths didn’t care, laughing over it. Smoking and drinking too, but the little monster did not pick up on that part.

Georgie approached them with a smile. “Howdy!” he said, very proud of himself for remembering a greeting.

Four sets of eyes snapped to him, with varying degrees of dullness to their wet shine. Not used to scrutiny, Georgie focused on instead fiddling with the rubbery yellow jacket of his not-skin. The one called Henry, as always, leader that he was, spoke first.

“Hey little man,” he crooned. Drinking had left him more affable than usual. “You selling cookies or something?” He laughed heartily as if that were the funniest statement made on this side of the continent. His friends joined him in it.

The boy’s grin stretched wider. Humans were very weird. A good weird, like Bill’s stories. And like those stories he wanted to learn more. “Nuh-uh, sir. Why would I be?”

Well, affable was only relative. Henry stopped laughing. “Girl Scouts, dumbass. Now scram before I make you.”

“How would you do that?” Georgie giggled. “You’re not very strong.” Oblivious to the change in mood, he attempted to climb into the back of the truck, currently occupied by members ‘Belch’ and Vic. The blond kicked a long, skinny leg at the boy’s face, who did actually fall back onto the pavement, if more out of shock than anything else.

Henry had turned off the music at some point, the silence filled only with the sound of more laughter. He leaned out the side of the car, watching the kid. He was surprised to see he wasn’t crying, just staring up at the big blue sky with a frown. And there were barely visible scars from the corners of his lips, he noticed, creeping upwards in a grin. Somehow, almost uncannily, a row of teeth was still visible despite his expression. _Definitely slow,_ he decided.

“I’ll give you one thing, freak,” he said, “you got quite a mouth on you. Literally, toothy little thing.” Henry gestured vaguely at Belch to go do his job. The boy got up, cursing under his breath something about just getting comfortable.

From Georgie’s perspective, it was as if a large, fleshy sun was dawning over the horizon. A frown-y angry ugly one too. He was not angry himself, but he sure didn’t feel happy anymore. He tried to smile, smiling was nice. A hand roughly grabbed his shoulder, pulling him up.

“Shoo,” the large teen said simply, crossing his arms.

He was a little scared. He did not like all those eyes on him. They weren’t the comfortable brightness of his siblings. Nor did he like the feeling of being shoved back, the sensation on his fake flesh almost painful.

“God, are you retarded? Stop fucking smiling. Leave!”

He was still hungry. Very hungry. The teen pulled his arm back. He punched.

His fist disappeared into a fleshy gullet with rows and rows of sharp white teeth.

And then the mouth was shut, and the teeth were gone, along with the boy's right arm.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> ah yes, finally, the true purposes of this fanfic revealed and executed: georgie gets to play the uno reverse card on limb removal. anyway sorry if you expected the events of last chapter to be resolved! don't worry, the next chapter will get right back into the thick of it. 
> 
> Preview: Bill and Stan attempt to investigate the intruders in their sewers. Mike, Richie, and Ben search for answers in said sewers. Beverly and Eddie hatch a plan to protect their respective beaus (not that they particularly realize that yet). And of course, for all parties, it goes wrong.


End file.
